That was an awesome experiment and writeup. It's amazing what you can do with this game, from killing zombies to performing social experiments on human behavior in limited resource environments. I hope to see other experiments by you!

If you open those pictures in a program you can zoom in with you can see that theres iron coal and even gold just sitting on the surface. Yet the people had trouble getting iron? Also why were there no torches anywhere except the griefers base? It looks like not even the merchants guild had any inside of their base. You said people went to the nether and harvested netherack and things from there but you see none anywhere on the map.

In the original description all players were always on at exactly the same time. If a griefer always stayed at their base, they could have easily taken out people building a tower with arrows from their base. This might have been why.

Especially when it seems the greifers had trees, and probably farms up there. They maybe had a nice collection of mats for arrows etc

They had to leave their base when they were griefing the other groups. Their base wouldn't be as well defended then. Also if you build a 1x1 pillar directly underneath the island to go up they would have to break part of the ground to shoot down at you or build a little bridge to shoot down from. But if they did that the people invading could shoot back at them.

The reason there is surface minerals is because at a certain point most people didn't have the ability to mine anything, the torches are missing from most locations because they were stolen and eventually lost underground or in various places. The griefers were systematic, often leaving one to defend and one to harass. People did break in but since the griefers had superior weapons/armor they never lost a fight and often harvested the tower used to get in their base. Netherack had disappeared because the griefers would farm it from peoples houses and then give it back to the merchant's guild to keep the other players in an endless struggle. The Merchant's Guild has torches, in fact you can see them in the above view. I understand if you doubt the experiment as the results are very hard to comprehend. If I didn't witness it first hand I would hope that this was a hoax too.

scratch that, I would trick a group of people into working for me then I will force all of the other groups to join or I would send my army to kill them. after killing all of the people who would not join I would have my servants mine for diamonds and put them in a community chest, then I would take the diamonds while nobody is looking and turn them into armor and tools. After getting diamond armor and tools I would rampage through town killing everyone, then I would be all supreme ruler of everyone on the server.

Edit: I would probably leave a few people but keep them in triple layer obsidian confinement.

I took one look at the picture, and I thought it was another complaint about griefing, but then I got sucked into reading the entire thing. This was SO SO interesting. Thank you for creating this great experiment, It was very interesting to learn about.

Have you considered running another experiment, but this time removing all lava from the world, and a mod preventing item decay? It would be interesting to see the results of what would happen if you had a completely closed system (entropy would, of course, play out in the form of the slow degradation of the world), and it would certainly be interesting to watch.

If you don't want to, though, I run a server that roughly 10 people from my dorm building play on, and I could run the experiment myself. However, I would most likely expand the world size to 1kmx1km to give the world more time to fall.

Either way, it makes me legitimately afraid for the future of the world IRL.

Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack

We did not invent the Algorithm. The Algorithm consistently finds Jesus. The Algorithm killed Jeeves. The Algorithm is banned in China. The Algorithm is from Jersey. The Algorithm constantly finds Jesus. This is not the Algorithm. This is Close.

Wow, that is intensely bleak, but at the same time, emotional and dramatic. Even though the land gets completely wasted, the factions continue to struggle in the name of greed. I sort of want to write a short fanfic about this now.

In addition, the apocalypse-nerd part of me is running around in circles.

In all honesty, it reminds me of the (paper-thin unless you look more deeply into it) storyline of GREED Corp.

Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack

We did not invent the Algorithm. The Algorithm consistently finds Jesus. The Algorithm killed Jeeves. The Algorithm is banned in China. The Algorithm is from Jersey. The Algorithm constantly finds Jesus. This is not the Algorithm. This is Close.

It's been said many times already, but this was an INCREDIBLE read. As a person who loves studying social psychology, I found this concept intriguing, and read it just like the Stanly Milgrim experiment and Standford Prison Experiment. This, in its own way, is just as valid on a larger scale. I found the post a terrific read, and those pictures at the end were great to see as well. It was nice to be able to see into this... hellscape.

Like most of the people here, I thought that this was going to be just another creepypasta of the likes of H*******e's adventures of trolling unsuspecting users. But as I read through (while a mashup of Welcome to the Space Jam and Nyan Cat plays on the background), I was completely immersed by the read.

It really is scary to witness how humans can act, even in a game like Minecraft, and seeing that desolate landscape makes you wonder if our world would share the same fate given the right circumstances.

Very Interesting, but I suspect that this was pre-1.8, as currently a lack of grass would not be so cataclysmic.You would only need a wheat farm and a room of whatever size with two animals in it. But please, explain to me why at an early stage no players escaped the walls by going into the nether (Which you imply has no restrictions in it) and after traveling for a ways portalling out?

Also, why were no towers made for the explicit purpose of raiding the griefers' floating slab-o'-dirt? All you need is a staircase of anything, or even a 1x1 pillar.

Again, very interesting, though I think you should attempt this again in a 1.3 setting, for a more current (And therefore accurate) experiment.

I think a more detailed and better catalogged experiment is in order. Get ~10-20 people to play, none of which are from the earlier experiment or have read this thread and go again. Same paramaters in regards to servre up time, take daily screen shots using a mapping program (like cartagrapher or such,) and you can't play, just observe. I would also limit the nether with the amount of area you can go, something to about 1/2 or 1/4 of the size you have the map set up for.